'Why?': Family of murdered Lansing toddler Wynter Cole-Smith gets no answers as killer sentenced

LANSING — More than a year after 2-year-old Wynter Cole-Smith was abducted from her Lansing home, strangled and dumped in a Detroit alley, and weeks after Rashad Trice pleaded guilty to killing her, her family still wonders what prompted him to do it.

"The big question was, 'Why?,'" Wynter's grandfather, Almount Smith Sr., said Friday before Trice was sentenced to mandatory life in prison without parole. "Wynter was my first blood, my only grandchild."

Smith periodically broke down in tears while addressing Ingham County Circuit Judge Joyce Draganchuk, who later handed Trice the mandatory sentence for first-degree murder and a concurrent term of 60 to 90 years for first-degree criminal sexual conduct relating to an assault on Wynter's mother.

The words, "coward," "monster" and "killer" don't really describe Trice, the grandfather said.

"To me, you're none of that," Smith said. "To me, there is no word that describes you."

Trice, 27, pleaded guilty to the two state-court charges on July 1 , one day before the one-year aniversary of Wynter's kidnapping and several months after he had pleaded guilty to a federal charge of kidnapping resulting in death, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison. Federal officials opted against seeking the death penalty .

He is scheduled to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids on Aug. 23.

In federal court in March, Trice admitted taking Wynter from her mother in Lansing and later strangling her with a phone cord. The July 2 kidnapping started a statewide search for him and Wynter, and police later found her dead on July 5 in an alley near Coleman A. Young International Airport in Detroit.

At one point, Trice faced more than 20 criminal charges in federal court and three Michigan counties. The state cases were later consolidated into a single Ingham County Circuit Court case prosecuted by the state Attorney General’s Office.

Ingham County Public Defender Keith Watson said it was the first time he's allowed a client to plead guilty to a mandatory life offense. Trice decided to plead guilty against his attorney's advice, Watson said.

"I don’t know what speaks more loudly about remorse than pleading guilty to a mandatory life sentence, he said.

Many people have asked why Trice acted as he did, and part of the answer may lie in a poor upbringing and the fact he has "some sort" of attachment disorder, Watson said. The attorney also said Trice is "mildly congnitively impaired."

Assistant state Attorney General Danielle Russo Bennetts said Trice, who appeared in court via a video link to the Newaygo County Jail, had shown little emotion or "acceptance of grief."

"There's accountability here but not remorse," she said.

Trice, who was dressed in orange coveralls and sat with his elbows resting on his knees as he looked into the camera at the jail, declined to address Draganchuk as the 43-minute sentencing hearing was drawing to a close.

In a statement read in court by the assistant attorney general, Wynter's maternal grandmother described the little girl as a "brilliant, bright and very affectionate toddler."

"She was so full of love," Willeen Cannon said in the statement, adding that she believed the death penalty would be "a wake-up call" for Trice.

"Rashad took her life like an animal," she said.

Contact Ken Palmer at kpalmer@lsj.com . Follow him on X @KBPalm_lsj.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: 'Why?': Family of murdered Lansing toddler Wynter Cole-Smith gets no answers as killer sentenced